ARANEID^ — TRUE SPIDERS. 339 



webs about the doors ; but when Alexander and tlic Mace- 

 donians attacked their dominions, their webs were found to 

 be black. 1 



It was thouo:ht bv the Classical Ancients and the old 

 Endish unlucky to kill Spiders ; and prognostications were 

 made from their manner of weaving their webs.^ It is still 

 thought unlucky to injure these animals. 



Park has the following note in his copy of Bourne and 

 Brande's Popular Antiquities, p. 93 : " Small Spiders, termed 

 money-spinners, are held by many to prognosticate good 

 luck, if they are not destroyed or injured, or removed from 

 the person on whom they are first observed." 



In Teviotdale, Scotland, "when Spiders creep on one's 

 clothes, it is viewed as betokening good luck ; and to destroy 

 them is equivalent to throwing stones at one's own head."^ 



In Maryland, this superstition is thus expressed: If you 

 kill a Spider upon your clothing, you destroy the presents 

 they are then weaving for you. 



In the Secret Memoirs of Mr. Duncan Campbell, p. GO, 

 in the chapter of omens, we read that " others have thought 

 themselves secure of receiving money, if by chance a little 

 Spider fell upon their clothes."* 



" When a Spider is found upon your clothes, or about 

 your person," says a writer in the iSotes and Queries,^ "it 

 signifies that you will shortly receive some money. Old 

 Fuller, who was a native of Xorthamptonshire, thus quaintly 

 moralizes this superstition : * When a Spider is found upon 

 your clothes, we used to say some money is coming toward 

 us. The moral is this : such who imitate the industry of 

 that contemptible creature may, by God's blessing, weave 

 themselves into wealth and procure a plentiful estate.' '"^ 



A South Northamptonshire superstition of the present 

 day is, that, in order to propitiate money-spinners, they 

 must be thrown over the left shoulder.' 



It is most probable that Euclio, in Plautus' Aulularia, 



1 Pans. Hist, of Greece, B. 9, c. G. 



2 Fosbr. Encycl. of Antiq. 



3 Jamie.son's Scoitixh Diet. 



* Brande's Pop. Antiq., iii. 223, 

 6 N. and Q., iii. 3. 

 6 Worthies, p. 58. Pt. II. Ed. 1662. 

 ^N. and Q., ii. IGo. 



